Built for show, sacred and otherwise

Originally published March 7, 2014 at 10:06 am

Updated March 25, 2014 at 7:21 pm

THEN: The Seattle Unitarians’ first church, here on Seventh Avenue, was dedicated in 1889. After they moved to Capitol Hill, this building was used for a great variety of events, including a concert hall for the Ladies Musical Club and a venue for political events, such as anarchist Emma Goldman’s visit to Seattle in 1910.

NOW: Both the church and Dreamland, its neighbor, were razed in 1923 for construction of the Eagles Auditorium, now called Kreielsheimer Place. The building, between Union and Pike streets, is home to ACT Theatre as well as residential apartments.

THE FIRST Unitarian Church of Seattle was built in 1889, only two years after Samuel Eliot, the 25-year-old son of Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University and perhaps then the most famous educator in the Western Hemisphere, arrived in Seattle to help its Unitarians get organized and build this sanctuary.

Local architect Hermann Steinman presented the drawings as a gift to the new congregation. Soon after the construction commenced mid-May 1889, the church’s rising belfry was easily visible around the city. The construction, here on the east side of Seventh Avenue between Union and Pike streets, was not affected when most of Seattle’s business district was consumed by the Great Fire of June 6, 1889.

The photograph by Asahel Curtis was recorded about 20 years later — most likely 1909, by which time the Unitarians had moved on and turned the building over to other users. In the Curtis photo, the church building is squeezed on the right (south) by the popular Dreamland, a large hall built as a roller rink in 1908, but then soon given to dancing and a great variety of assemblies, many of them labor-related and politically liberal. These politics also fit the activism of the AOUW (Ancient Order of United Workmen), which used the old church for its Columbia Lodge soon after the popular Unitarians had moved to Capitol Hill. The Columbia name is signed on the steeple.

The First Unitarians dedicated their new, larger church on Boylston Avenue in 1906. It had 800 seats, the better to stage the church’s productions, which included concerts of many sorts, adult Sunday schools led by University of Washington profs, classes in psychology and comparative religion, and plays by the Unitarian Dramatic Club.

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Dramatic presentations continue on the original church site with ACT Theatre. Jean Sherrard used his recent benefit appearance on an ACT stage as an opportunity to pose the theater’s support staff at its Seventh Avenue side entrance for this week’s “Now.” To quote Sherrard, “I don’t know if any are Unitarians or not, but they are surely united in their vision for a transcendent theatrical experience.”